September 2018

My second store, ubermugs, has been open for a couple of months. While its doing substantially better in its first months than our first store, its nowhere near where it could be. I have taken my experiences from Drink Everyday and have added a few new things. With that being said, these are the 5 things that I’m Doing to Increase Etsy Sales.

Customer Service –

While this is a generic term and one of the pillars of good sales let me just explain myself here. I’ve come to notice that potential customers tend to make rash decisions. If a customer sends you a request, and you do not respond instantly, they might be completely off Etsy by the time you respond. I unfortunately do not have any metrics to prove what I’m about to say so take it with a grain of salt. If you’re able to respond to the customer while they are actively browsing your store or Etsy, it will increase your chancing at closing the deal. Some of my biggest deals were closed by having a quick response to answer the customer. Almost always, I receive a “Thank you for your quick response”. If you have not already downloaded the etsy sellers app you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Being prepared –

Once again one of those generic and obvious things one should do. Hear me out… I primarily sell coffee mugs on UBERMUGS. With that being said I do have some niche designs that can target holidays. Its imperative to be sure you’re setting up your store WELL BEFORE THE HOLIDAYS. At the time of posting it is September 17,2018. Right now I have the retail mentality and I am already posting and giving Halloween focus. Etsy themselves say that Halloween is one of the most important holidays of the year. If you target specific days its imperative that you pay attention to the Key Shopping Dates tab in your account. Marketing > Key Shopping Dates.

Halloween is a big deal on Etsy: in recent years, more people searched Etsy for “Halloween” than “Mother’s Day,” or “Father’s Day.”

Halloween shopping starts in late September, so stock your shop with Halloween items and consider starting discounts up before then.

Establishing a Social Presence –

I absolutely hate the rigors of actively maintaining a social media account. Back in my day, we had to walk 15 miles in the snow to update our friends! With having a full time job, being a full time parent, being a part time enrapture, it leaves very little time to do anything else. It’s extremely difficult to remember to post daily to social media and much less the defacto requirement of at least 2 times. I have recently signed up with BUFFER to alleviate some of the headaches. Paying for the single user “license” grants me the ability to manage up to 10 social media accounts and schedule up to 100 posts in advanced. Not only does this grant me the freedom of not having to “post every day”. It gives me the freedom of queuing all of my posts at my own leisure.

To further touch on this subject I’ve also started 2 niche Instagram accounts. I’ve been able to actively grow my user base from 0 to over 1000 followers targeted specifically at my niche. As of right now, I have not used any of the accounts to promote any items and will not do so until it’s closer to Christmas. I would like for my accounts to focus and grow rather than annoy and attack.

Cross-Selling –

If you have a car you need gas and tires. If you’re selling hamburgers you should also consider selling fries and a drink. Cross selling is something I’m exposed to every single time I’ve purchased online. With that being said its absurd I never thought about trying to do the same. There have been countless amounts of times where I’ve gone out to purchase an Item and I ended up following the suggestions of some stupid algorithm.

For a brief period of time we sold only wine glasses. While they sold great, I couldn’t help but think we were losing out to people who might want the design on a coffee mug. As our sales grew, money came in, I decided to start the mug side of our business. The exact same designs we were already selling on wine glasses started selling on Coffee Mugs. Just recently, I decided to add similar items that are in the general vicinity of whatever we’re selling. ie: stickers ( Just more opportunities )

Managing my Time –

Good and bad days are all around! I’ve been able to use some tools to help do some of the boring and annoying things. These are the following tips I can give you to manage time:

Set a schedule – If you only have 20 minutes a day make those the most productive. Take the first 20 minutes on Monday ( or whenever ) to plan out the rest of the week.

Automate the tasks you hate the most – I hate social media. I use Buffer to schedule posts. Captivate to add people on social media. Unfollow to remove dead accounts I’m following

The decision to upgrade from our tried and true Cricut was one with much hesitancy. Our workhouse has been faithfully working for us for the past year flawlessly! Thousands of orders, thousands of sales, and always ready for action is how I would best describe our Cricut. However, with that being said there were some instances where our best friend was giving us some headaches.

The problem with the Cricut in general for us was the online software. Having to be forced to be on the Cricut Design Space 100% of the time really did annoy my wife and I. The limited cutting lengths also left a lot to be desired. Granted, this printer is not made for commercial use and more of a craft based hobby, it could have been made more with a longer out feed. The final nail in the coffin was the stepper motor. While reliable, it just took way too long if we had to cut many pieces. Don’t get me wrong, I love our Cricut, we just needed more.

Graphtec CE6000-60 Plus

Enter the Graphtec CE6000-60 Plus. This behemoth of a machine gives you up to a 24 inch cutting surface ( extra 12 inches over Cricut ). Has the ability for variable cutting speed, passes, cutting patterns, and more. While the critic is catered to more of a hobbyist this is as professional as they come.

Software: The unit itself comes with its own proprietary vector software called Graphtec Pro Studio. I haven’t had much time to use it and become familiar with it but it does seem faster than using the Design Studio. Another alternative to using their software would be to install the drivers for Illustrator. So far I’ve found that using their pro studio seems to be just fine.

Footprint: Our home business consists of us working where the dining room table should be. We have since moved the table out and made this our permanent business location. With that being said this monster is quite large compared to the Cricut. We had the space to fit it but unless you have an area dedicated to it you might want to reconsider.

Cost: Apparently Graphtec has some exporters which will get an export pricing. After speaking to a representative I was told that international models do not have the same standard warranty as those sold by domestic sales. The the prices given to me by exporters ranged from 1500 – 1650 where their domestic counterpart was 1715 – 1795.

Why did we buy a Graphtec CE6000-60 plus? I’m writing this post at the start of September. Since we started our store pretty much during Christmas of 2017 we can see how terrible it is to have to wait on a machine. We were getting roughly 25+ orders or more a day and it was causing us a lot of stress and many sleepless nights. In hopes of picking up production ( and not having to be next to the machine ) we went ahead with the more professional unit. This 1795 dollar investment should hopefully help us make that and more this coming Christmas.